Are you ready for the Fox-NBC partnership on a Hillary miniseries?

posted at 1:01 pm on August 10, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Alternate title: ABC prepares George Stephanopoulos to moderate all GOP primary debates. The New York Times reports today that NBC may have a partner for the Hillary Clinton miniseries which RNC chair Reince Priebus demanded to be canceled as a condition of sanctioning Republican presidential primary debates on the network. The miniseries tentatively scheduled to air in 2016 may be produced by Fox Television Studios, a subsidiary of News Corp and a sister to NBC’s competitor Fox News:

While NBC has come under heavy fire, especially from Republican critics, for agreeing to broadcast the series, the project may wind up being produced by another company: Fox Television Studios, the sister company of the conservative favorite, Fox News.

Leslie Oren, a spokesman for FTVS, as the studio is known, confirmed that NBC is in “the early stages” of discussions to bring the Fox unit in as the production company on the as yet unnamed mini-series, which will star Diane Lane as Mrs. Clinton.

“There is no deal yet,” Ms. Oren said. But should a deal be completed, FTVS would become the distributor of the film internationally. FTVS is the production arm of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment group.

It would also become something of an odd partner in what has become a contentious project, especially after Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, threatened to keep presidential debates involving Republican candidates off both NBC and its news channel MSNBC, if it went ahead with what he called a “promotional movie about the life of Hillary Clinton.”

The Atlantic wonders what Priebus, who appears occasionally on Fox News, will have to say about this partnership should it come to fruition. Connor Simpson includes Media Matters’ David Brock in the BOLO list:

How Brock and Preibus feel about this latest development is still a mystery, but it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. Preibus appears on Fox News from time to time.

Carter is certainly right about one thing, regardless of whether this deal comes to fruition: an NBC and Fox partnership sure would be odd. These are the entertainment arms of each company, sure, but the news and political arms are mortal enemies. MSNBC is the left’s answer to Fox News’s conservative bent. To have the two companies team up, even if it’s the non-news sides, is akin to watching two enemies fall into bed together.

Brock’s complaints about the NBC (and CNN) decision were that the focus on Hillary would provide a disadvantage to other Democratic candidates, and that NBC might “adopt [the] ideological lens” of the GOP in its production. At the time, I suggested that was hardly a big concern, but having Fox produce the miniseries will certainly give Brock and the Left more ammunition on that score.

And that may well be NBC’s intent. The broad criticism of the decision may have them looking for cover against charges that they are basically running a prime-time advertisement for Hillary Clinton. What better cover can they get than to have Rupert Murdoch’s empire produce the miniseries? When accusations of hagiography get tossed around, NBC and Comcast can simply point to Fox and say that any such issues should be directed to the production and not the broadcaster. It will be a little more difficult to lay charges of Hillary bias at the feet of Fox.

Meanwhile, that narrows Priebus’ options if he still wants broadcast networks to carry the debates. He’s left with CBS and Scott Pelley, or ABC and George Stephanopoulos. If you’ve forgotten Pelley’s performance in primary debates, let me remind you that he sees himself as a participant (an uninformed one at that) rather than a moderator, which is a big part of the problem with the current debate format. Stephanopoulos not only used to work for the Clintons, he also teed up the contraceptive issue for Barack Obama in the January 2012 New Hampshire debate. If these are our last two options under Priebus’ ultimatum, then it’s an even better push to taking the debates in-house at the RNC and letting C-SPAN run them live.

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Do they owe Hillary or the democratic party something? Why else would you risk spending a huge amount of money on a series that I can’t imagine will get a huge amount of viewers, unless you count those with insomnia, they might want to watch. :)

Well, fellow Conservatives, I guess it’s time to admit that we’re pretty well screwed. Now that the ENTIRE MSM is beginning the Hillary coronation process, Harry Reid is extremely comfortable in publicly announcing the era of single-payer socialized medicine, record numbers of people are on food stamps and disability and as a crowning touch they’ve “absolutely” got the votes in the House for amnestying who knows how many illegals + their millions of friends and family, I can’t quite seem to imagine a way out of this hole. If anyone sees it any differently, please speak up, otherwise I think we’ll just cancel our internet service and start stocking up on canned goods.

We will not be saved by Fox Television. They aren’t much better than the others. A little, but not enough to matter anymore.

I don’t know if Reince Priebus was just trying to exert GOP control over the candidate selection process via the debates, or something else, but it isn’t going well for him. He should have just approached the problem directly rather than playing games.

Great idea. Her story, from beauty queen to housewife to upstart governor that bucked her own party in fighting corruption. Probably would get huge ratings. And that would be the ultimate match up, Palin vs Hilary for prez. Palin would win for a host of reasons, not chief among them is that Palin is attractive, Hilary not so much.

Man, I get so tired of this line. NBC is the left’s answer to Fox News’ just-barely-right-of-center bent. MSNBC is the left’s answer to TheBlaze TV. And even that equivalence is weak, because TheBlaze espouses an actual ideology whereas MSNBC espouses nothing more than slavish devotion to the federal government and the cult of personality surrounding the Chicago Jesus. MSNBC is really the left’s answer to KCTV.

If enough people are as fed up as you are (and just about everyone I know feels the same way) then maybe we have a fighting chance. All we need is the right candidate and for people to not sit out the election.

We will not be saved by Fox Television. They aren’t much better than the others. A little, but not enough to matter anymore.

I don’t know if Reince Priebus was just trying to exert GOP control over the candidate selection process via the debates, or something else, but it isn’t going well for him. He should have just approached the problem directly rather than playing games.

sharrukin on August 10, 2013 at 1:21 PM

Yep, I realize that. It’s all pretty futile anyway. This Hillary movie brouhaha is like the crew of the Titanic arguing about how fast they’re going to sink.

If enough people are as fed up as you are (and just about everyone I know feels the same way) then maybe we have a fighting chance. All we need is the right candidate and for people to not sit out the election.

If this deal goes ahead, then it would prove that for all the Conservative FOX imagery, IT IS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.
Look at a lot of the FOX Entertainment products they have in their programming… lots of liberal, Conservative hating stuff…
So, maybe they should do this with NBC. It might finally wake Conservatives up to the fact that for Ailes, etc. it is all about making a lot of money pandering to the right. They own the right oriented market and the other networks compete for the general average.
If you realize that there are over 300 million Americans, most own a TV and the numbers for so-called most viewed shows like O’Reilly have only about 2 million viewers, the markets they all compete over are miniscule in real numbers.
How about late night TV… the numbers are astronomical if they reach 10 – 15 million viewers.
That is at most…. 5% of Americans?

That’s true, but lately a lot of those lefty commentators have not been pleased with the administration and have begun agreeing with people like Charles K. Except for maybe Juan, he’s almost always on the left side of issues. Take the president’s latest economy tour, no one thought it was inspiring and all thought it was just more of the same.

Housekeeping – the Fox Entertainment Group (including both Fox News and Fox Television Studios) is now Twenty-First Century Fox, as Rupert Murdoch split off the print concerns (including Dow Jones and the New York Post into a new News Corp.

Given Fox Television Studios gave us such shows as “Wilfred”, “The Girls Next Door” and “Malcolm in the Middle”, they and Fox News Channel are at best cousins.

Rs are soooo stupid. They’ll have George and Megyn Kelly as moderators and claim they’re both “fair and balanced”. The fools have no clue that both are Hillary shills. Kelly is a lefty through and through. She’s just shrewd and hides it.

If anybody hasn’t seen Fox’s leftward lunge, they must be viewing the world through Freudian cataracts.

. Sean Hannity being booted out of prime time
. Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter becoming infrequent guests on O’Reilly while leftist professor Marc Lamont Hill is a regular.
.With Megyn Kelly, prime time will be dominated by left-leaning journalists and the opinionated Bill O’Reilly whose only politics is to sell his own books and keep his ratings high–for which he would sell his entire family into slavery if that’s what it took to achieve those two goals.

If conservatives want to survive in a PC world which is increasingly inundating them, they better employ one leftist tactic that is successful—-using their economic muscles. If a store chain takes a PC stance, don’t patronize it. If an actor makes an outrageous statement, boycott his movies. If Fox moves left, don’t watch it.

.
Great idea. Her story, from beauty queen to housewife to upstart governor that bucked her own party in fighting corruption. Probably would get huge ratings. And that would be the ultimate match up, Palin vs Hilary for prez. Palin would win for a host of reasons, not chief among them is that Palin is attractive, Hilary not so much.

anotherJoe on August 10, 2013 at 1:21 PM

.‘Joe’s onto something. A real biographical production on Sarah Palin would blow-away anything on Hillary.

Uninterested. A Hillary bio-pic? Seriously? And a whole mini-series no less? Even if Shrillary was a Republican, I can’t think of a more boring program. What are they going to fill up a whole mini-series with? Long drawn out scenes of her sitting at a desk? Eating a sandwich in the State Department cafeteria? My prediction: lowest ratings ever no matter who’s involved.

Maybe if Glenn Beck solely wrote, directed and produced it, and cut it down to a single 30-minute show there might be some humor value. Short of that, no.

If these are our last two options under Priebus’ ultimatum, then it’s an even better push to taking the debates in-house at the RNC and letting C-SPAN run them live.

Oh! That isn’t going far enough. The RNC should bankroll a competing documentary- Hillary Clinton the lost decades. Covering the relevant stuff like the string of convenient deaths (Vince Foster, Jim McDougall, Ron Brown) in the Clinton’s life. The fact that she was in the strategy meetings on how to deal with the Monica problem. And the fact that the Benghazi cover-up is about the only accomplishment of her time as SecState.

But, I’ve got to say, I think making too much of a fuss about a worthless dried up whore is wrong tactics. They are making Shrillary into the Demonrat the GOP is most scared of meeting in the general election- that is three years off.

Joe’s onto something. A real biographical production on Sarah Palin would blow-away anything on Hillary.

It would be the “upstaging of the century.”

listens2glenn on August 10, 2013 at 2:06 PM

Exactly, it would be HUGE! And it would be billed as “the dueling mini-series,” one for Hillary vs one for Palin, hopefully a prelude to the 2016 contest! Money is to be made! Somebody here just do it, or pass the word on to somebody that can. Yes you can!

Great idea. Her story, from beauty queen to housewife to upstart governor that bucked her own party in fighting corruption. Probably would get huge ratings. And that would be the ultimate match up, Palin vs Hilary for prez. Palin would win for a host of reasons, not chief among them is that Palin is attractive, Hilary not so much.

anotherJoe on August 10, 2013 at 1:21 PM

Willfully obtuse, leftard dimwit ‘faraway’ is trying to equate the utterly dishonest HBO slime/hit job series on Palin with the doubtless adoring ,cheerleading fantasy that will be produced about the pig-in-a-pantsuit.

Does Hotair have a puke smily face I can post here?
If so what keystokes?

Once again BigSven reiterates that he has dropped cable TV, and doesn’t miss any of it !! Internet, apple TV (with Netflix, sports etc.) is more than enough to satisfy and a lot cheaper ! You pay for what you want and DO NOT have to be insulted by propaganda, inane screaming heads(including FOX), life diversity homo-erotica, and a myriad other insults to the brain. Also no freaking insane commercials that seem to go on for ever.

If such an arrangement in fact exists, Fox Television Studios would just be providing sets, camera and lighting equipment, crews, editors, etc. But NBC would still be scripting, casting and directing it.

In other words, NBC is writing and delivering the speech, while Fox TV Studios is just renting out the hall.